


Where Does Hope Lie?

by stringlessfate



Series: God Eater Oneshots [1]
Category: God Eater (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, a goddess who, cryptic talking, depressed™, who are these people???, yes this is god eater-verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stringlessfate/pseuds/stringlessfate
Summary: The world continues to change, and humanity's stand in this war for survival has only remained as it was before. Things have become different, and yet everything still feels as though it is a cycle. Will there ever be freedom from these bewildered gods?He asked her, the goddess walking the earth. And her eyes held none of the answers he wished to hear.
Series: God Eater Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589788
Kudos: 5





	Where Does Hope Lie?

It was in the year 2050s when the first outbreak known to man occurred. The sudden influx of wild gods labeled as Aragami reduced the Earth’s population and turned cities after cities to dust. In a short span of time, the luscious green planet became a massive wasteland of dry ground and fallen skyscrapers overrun by beasts roaming the horizon like landlords.

Fenrir took over what remained of the world. The scarce food supplies were genetically engineered and distributed to the people under their wing. They started to engineer  _ everything  _ from Oracle Cells. Food. Clothes. Shelter.

Weapons to fight against the Aragami.

In the twenty-eighth of August, year 2053, the first ‘God Eater’ was born. An important event in human history. A clear indication that  _ yes _ , they can fight against the Aragami.

Developments continued in the field of Oracle Cell technology. They even replicated trees, gave them a defensive purpose by feeding them ampules and adjusting a ‘bias’. Nearly everything was being constructed through Oracle Cells.

Until 2074, when the remnants of an Eternal Destruction left behind a ‘Sacred Ground’. It was everything the world was before the outbreak—grass under their feet, trees standing tall under the sun and giving shade, crops growing in cultivated fields, animals alive and  _ actually _ existing in the area where Earth was supposedly reborn. It raises a good question, doesn’t it?

The silver-haired man frowns slightly. He runs his fingers delicately on the flowers rubbing against the fabric of his pants. A few seconds longer and he plucks one out, one with a color like the deep blue eyes of a woman in his memory. 

After the appearance of the Ashlands in the year 2080s, it was as though they’ve only returned to the starting line. Earth was once again another wasteland, only this time with ashes, cinders and the looming threat of an incoming storm. They’ve discovered the ‘oases’, patches of healthy land very much like the Sacred Ground, but provides only finite resources before it crumbles under the storms. Still, it was akin to a temporary paradise, like a faint glimmer of hope in the darkness.

At least it is how people looked at it.

“You know, don’t you?” The woman by his side speaks. She threads her fingers through the blades of grass, like feeling the ground as though it was a skin. “It’s dying.” Her voice is melancholic, same to that of a doctor breaking the terrible news to a patient’s family. “The people of the old world started to kill it slowly, and the outbreak of the Aragami was the first desperate plea.”

He watches her for a moment, her hand caressing the surface, like a mother would to her sick child. She hums softly and, around where they sit, more flowers come to bloom. “How do you know that?” He then asks, gaze not straying from the woman.

“It is an Aragami,” she replies, certainty in her voice. It was neither a guess nor a theory, but a fact, one that is perhaps not known to many. “It lives. It breathes. And like every other living creature, it cries when it is hurt. It has been hurting... for decades long now. It seeks to die. To end its suffering. For the pain to be over.”

Perhaps if he had been the man he was in the past, he would have called it ridiculous. Stupid even. How many lives would that require as a sacrifice, for a future that there is no certainty? If he had boarded that ship and flew off into space, watched the world be consumed completely, who amongst them was then sure that there would be another home to come back to? They had many doubts then, fighting only for what they believe is right. 

But ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are dependent on what side of the argument you stand. They’re humans, flawed creatures governed mostly by emotions than logic. From the standpoint of a god, one who seeks what’s best for all, what would have been the right choice? Could it have been to sacrifice the lives of many so the selected few could live in a reborn world? 

He raises these questions to her, to the goddess who smiles softly back at him. The wind clears her face of stray strands of hair, and her golden eyes gazes off to the horizon. “Creation and destruction coexist, and so does life and death. For every life that expires, a new one comes to bloom. It is a cycle, an endless one, and it is what humanity refuses to understand. You cannot save life without giving up another, be it yours or not. You know that, don’t you?”

The man lowers his head. Of course. He knows that more than anybody. He had seen plenty of it in his lifetime, and one still leaves a stinging pain in his heart. “If the Ark had sailed to the stars and we left the world as that man had planned, what would have happened? Would we have cleared the planet of the Aragami?”

She laughs, a sound resonating in his chest. “You cannot rid the world of the Aragami, for the world itself is one. Its body is the earth that we walk on, and its heart and mind is the core. One cycle comes to an end, and thus, another begins. I suppose the perfect explanation is to say that the mind will return to the likeness of a child’s, pure and eager to learn. The years, decades and perhaps millenia will pass, and the accumulation of information will continue. As the core learns, civilizations will rise in the surface, life will flourish. And like every cycle, it will pass its moment of peak and slowly decay.”

As cryptic her words might be, he somehow understands. Nothing stays the same forever; they all grow and die, and the earth itself does not differ. Even intangible things are subject to change—memories, emotions, thoughts, ideals. The old world had plenty of similar experiences. Civilizations rose to fame and died, as the old books wrote. Heroes were celebrated and then forgotten. Everything comes to an end. 

Even a human who evades death in a time that they shouldn’t only prolongs their own suffering.

“Why do you think were we created?” The goddess continues to ask. “The Aragami were sent to sweep the surface clean. But it didn’t work quite well, did it?” A chuckle. “Humans are resilient and natural survivalists. And so, the Singularities, with bias so unique they consider nearly everything food. Gods capable of devouring everything all at once with a proper nudge to the right direction.” She lifts her golden eyes and stares at the greening moon. The same moon he’d been staring at for the last decade. “Still, you all managed to find a way around it.”

“Is this a recollection of all the mistakes we’ve done since the Aragami appeared?” He asks, lips pursed to a straight line. “You were there too, fighting alongside us. Fighting for the same thing as us. You risked your life to save her too, didn’t you? Or has it been fragmented by the apotheosis as well?”

“Human,” the woman answers. “Flawed. Flowing with emotions that easily cloud the mind. Humanity does not know the future that lies ahead of them, that sometimes, the better answer lies in the harder paths. You operate by instinct, by what your heart speaks that often, it blinds you to the bigger picture. When an Aragami acknowledges that it will not survive in a certain condition, doesn’t it evolve? Doesn’t it change aspects of itself to be able to survive? Ogretails that suffered in snowy regions altered their physical composition to live through the cold, and the same applies to those that ended up in blazing temperatures. Aragami acquire knowledge and, well... adapt, so to speak.”

It’s a knowledge known to him since he was young. In fact, he’d encountered it more often than not. Aragami acquire information from their surroundings and alter themselves to fit. “Then the Earth is not any different?”

“The Red Rain, the Ash Fall... For every time humanity adapts to a new ‘calamity’, it orchestrates another, creating even more powerful beasts along with it—the Deusphages, the Dreadnaughts, the Psions, the Ashborns.” 

“Why don’t you stop with the recollection and long, cryptic lecture and just give it to me straight? Aegis 2071 was a mistake, and we should have sacrificed who-knows-how-many lives for the sake of our own.” He didn’t intend to sound angry, but the words come out before he could stop them. Even if he’s given a chance to change back time, he would not change anything with his decisions. He’d still fight to honor the wish of a great friend, to remember the sacrifice of a fallen comrade, to prove to that man that there can be another way out of this war. “The Earth is dying and the only way to save it is to just kill it off completely.” He’d never raised his voice at the other before, and he didn’t really want to. But it was as though he’s being told that the efforts and sacrifices from the past battles—his own and others’—were all pointless; that they only doomed humanity to an even worse fate; that their decision to fight during those times only brought hell on land rather than paradise.

He relaxes from the outburst just as quick. Perhaps it’s him growing all throughout the years, or the influence of the goddess sitting by his side. “You taught me to have hope,” he continues, “and to never lose it, regardless of how despairing the situation might be. You taught me there’s no such thing as ‘only one way’. The Earth is dying, I know. We’ve doomed ourselves, I know. But  _ you _ are here, and in your every trail, you leave a sign of life--plants, flowers, an oasis. Temporary, yes, but isn’t that enough proof? That the Earth can  _ still _ be saved without a big of a sacrifice? Our fates has changed; who’s to say we can’t do the same thing to the planet?”

He stares down at the flower he had picked earlier. A blue iris flower. The flower of hope. Isn’t it ironic? 

A goddess, who believes that there is no longer any hope left for humankind, leaves a trail in her wake, a trail filled with flowers that represent hope itself.

For a brief moment, the goddess’ eyes grow glazed. Is it conflict that he’s seeing in her expression? “Must the earth really die for it to be fruitful again?” He continues to ask. “Is there no way to just… heal it?” He sees her biting her lip. “The oases are a good start. We could find a way to make them permanent, like the Sacred Ground. Isn’t that one possibility of solving this problem?”

She smiles, softly again. “And if another terrible calamity comes, one far worse than the Ash storms? Won’t you only return to square one? We’re here again—you humans often become blind to the bigger picture, to the bigger reality. Life and Death is a cycle. Creation and destruction operate hand in hand. There could not only be one, because then it would ensue chaos.”

“Then what are we supposed to do to save ourselves?”

Perhaps her next words were an attempt at humor, he isn’t sure. “Do what your father did—build a ship and set sail to the stars. Or the moon—you’ve always wanted to go to the moon, didn’t you? I can’t assure you that it will be able to accommodate the entire population, but it has an atmosphere and vegetation now. A mini-planet if you wish.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Even in those conditions, we won’t survive.”

“Then I suppose you simply wait. For the final plea. For the final cry. For the end that you really could not escape. The Earth  _ will _ die and  _ will _ be reborn, as it had always been.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was a piece I wrote for a small event in the God Eater Amino last April 2019. It was focused on an ‘Earth’ theme and what better topic to revolve on other than the planet's state in the God Eater universe?


End file.
